Yahoo Movies Moana 2’s tumultuous journey from Disney+ series to movie
The directors of Moana 2 sit down with Yahoo UK to talk about how they reworked Moana 2 from its original start as a series into a fully-fledged feature sequel
Moana 2 is a box office smash for Disney, taking a massive $363m (£305m) in its opening weekend, making it the second biggest opening weekend of 2024 behind Deadpool & Wolverine. So, it's surprising to note that the long-awaited sequel to 2016's Moana film was originally conceived as a straight-to-streaming TV series.
In Moana 2 Disney’s first Polynesian princess (voiced by Auliʻi Cravalho) embarks on another treacherous adventure across the ocean fighting storms, the gods and a fair amount of fish bile. It’s fitting that this follow-up’s journey to the big screen was equally eventful.
Announced back in 2020, the company announced the series as part of its big push for its new streaming service Disney+. If it was serious about challenging Netflix and Prime Video the studio's main incentive would have to be growth. Whereas in years past, the company would have rolled out a film sequel or two for a hugely popular animated movie, they decided to push their IP into short form (Moana is one of the service’s most popular movies, with over 80 billion minutes logged by viewers).
Despite the push, not all was well with the House of Mouse’s pet project, and in the first few years, Disney+ operated at a severe loss for the company. That fact, combined with Bob Chapek stepping down as CEO and Bob Iger returning, marked a shift in the company’s priorities.
Although work was already underway for Moana: The Series (as it was being called), Iger apparently saw early footage and thought it deserved the big screen treatment. So started a process that saw a massive changeover behind the scenes. Stars Cravalho and Dwayne Johnson, who plays the demigod Maui, were officially announced, while the show’s director David Derrick Jr. brought in Disney Animation regulars Jason Hand and Dana Ledoux Miller to co-helm the now big-screen vehicle.
"We really got to pull out all the stops," Miller tells Yahoo UK about the shift from series to film. "The effects got to be bigger, we got to really dive into all these characters and have more characters than we've had. So we just got to expand the world in ways that were really exciting to us."
The film reunites us with our titular heroine (Auli’i Cravalho) three years on from the first movie, making her the first Disney princess to age between films. After finding her footing as a wayfinder and saving her people, Moana is tasked by her ancestors to go further into the ocean than she’s ever gone before to fight against a vengeful storm god named Nalo who has sunk a magic island and separated the various communities of the Pacific Islands.
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Moana invites more people into her wayfinding world, including a ship-builder named Loto (voiced by comedian Rose Matafeo) and a farmer who can’t swim named Kele (David Fane). It’s clear the original series intended to open up the various communities that exist in the Pacific Islands, but despite having to now fit that story into a shorter film, Hand says they didn’t have to make any sacrifices.
"The condensing was really about just refocusing and making sure the story was only about Moana," he says. "But the great thing was that when we were making the series, we actually got to explore all of our new crew characters and understand what the best [parts of them were] and workshopping, in a sense."
The directors add that, as part of the move to the big screen, they were able to incorporate musical numbers, which weren’t in the original series. Lin Manuel Miranda famously penned the songs for the 2016 film and even earned an Oscar nomination for its lead single How Far I’ll Go. For Moana 2, Disney roped in songwriters Barlow and Bear (Abigail Barlow and Emily Bear) who made waves back in 2021 for their TikTok series The Unofficial Bridgerton Musical which went on to win a Grammy.
As well as songs, the directors say the visuals were able to be amped up to the max, including an epic finale sequence set in a swirling ocean vortex.
"We've created this epic storm at the end of the film, and to be able to see it on truly the biggest screens has been pretty incredible," says Miller. "You have this idea, you start spit-balling around and then suddenly there are these giant tornadoes on the screen and lightning that's out of this world.
"It's really been a special experience. And I can't even really remember what it was like as a TV show because it just always seemed right to be a feature."
Moana 2 is in cinemas now.
